GABRIELLEhttps://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com
Gabrielle Rogers: An art student in LondonThu, 22 Feb 2018 07:01:03 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://gabriellerogersart.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/cropped-expo-2.jpg?w=32GABRIELLEhttps://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com
3232BA Fine Art Y1T3 WK 1-2: SONIC ENVIRONMENThttps://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/ba-fine-art-y1t3-wk-1-2-sonic-environment/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/ba-fine-art-y1t3-wk-1-2-sonic-environment/#respondSun, 30 Apr 2017 09:58:28 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=529Continue reading BA Fine Art Y1T3 WK 1-2: SONIC ENVIRONMENT]]>A lot of time last term was spent working on a sound event with my entire pathway group (46 people), that took place between 14:00 and 16:00 on Wednesday the 26th of April in the K Project Space at Central St Martins, Kings Cross. Alongside spearheading the choreography team – planning where people’s work would be based in the space, how to structure the actual sound so that everyone’s work would be heard in the best way, timetabling performances – I performed in a live sound piece using contact microphones with 5 other people.

Our plan for our performance had changed so much from our original idea – a virtual reality yoga session – and we had decided on using contact microphones attached to a steel sheet, with the sound fed through a mixer into a laptop and out through stereo speakers. One member of the team mixed and distorted the sounds the rest of us made using vibrating/sound creating objects, and we performed with the room lights off, wearing hats, for 10 minutes. We initially wanted to suspend the sheet with wires from the ceiling, however this would have been a pretty high risk hazard, so we built a frame to hold it. This would have become a table which we knelt around, however we ran out of time before the event to be able to make it strong enough to hold the steel sheet and frame, so instead we laid the frame on top of 2 wooded palettes.

The objects we used included: a fan, an electric toothbrush, an electric nail file, a motor belt, an old Nokia with ring tone demos, an iPhone set to vibrate when called, a bag of fish tank stones, a bag of dried chickpeas, an empty Carlsberg can, an alarm clock, a load of bulldog clips, cardboard rolls, and duct tape.

During the performance, I sat at the end of the frame, and mainly used the bag of chickpeas to slam onto the metal and create a percussionist, rhythmic thud, and used my hands to press on the metal sheet, creating vibrations that were picked up by the contact microphones. I also used the Nokia to put out some ring tones, until it ran out of battery halfway through. I honestly didn’t charge it because, as a 10 year old Nokia, I had assumed it would last forever, but I stand proven wrong. We practised before the event playing around with the sounds and effects, to see how loud/interesting each tool was, and during the actual performance it was all improvisation; building up properly like a jam session, not just everyone clamouring to be heard at once.

We ended when Myles, who was mixing, motioned to Sam that it was approaching 10 minutes, who then brought out a Tibetan singing bowl from underneath the sheet, which was the cue to the rest of us to tone down again, and used the mic against the bowl to resonate a high pitched ringing, signalling the end of the performance. We all took our hats off and walked out, which ended up working really well as straight after the two people who had been recording the performance for us began conducting an “interview”.

In the group crit for the event next day we learnt that the Vice President of the university had been showing a VIP guest around, and brought him to our performance, which was really encouraging. I felt piece had been very intuitive, and as a team we were very responsive to each other as we made the sounds, especially down to Myles’ mixing. One of our tutors said that it was great that we had kind of accepted the role of the “band” for the event, which I appreciated because the event itself was so diverse. Their major criticism was on the use of palettes, as we could have spent more effort making the actual table. We did struggle due to the workshop running out of wood, but I don’t like to make excuses for not achieving things, and focusing on making finished pieces that look done is definitely an area I have been improving on.

The entire event itself was such a great collaboration from all of us – our tutors noted that it had been a long time since they had seen a group this large work so well together – and although I would have personally preferred the event to have been a single sound performance/piece involving all of us, there was a great balance and variety of work shown – paintings, installation, photography, and mainly performance and video work. We had the event start with us all stood outside the room; inside, the continuous video, performance, and sound pieces were set up and the lights were on. We all then entered the room collectively, and the event began. People from inside the uni came to watch, and after the first half an hour the lights were turned off and everyone’s work was stopped, as one group did a performance under their own lighting (there was a small issue with trying to get the bloody lights off as the light switch had a complete mind of it’s own, but we got there, with about 5 minutes to get everyone to cease their work for the performance). There was then another 5 minute interval, before my group did our performance. The event then continued with the lights off, and the others set up their work again. Things went quicker than expected and it seemed like people were losing interest, so half an hour before the event was due to end, we began to wind down. The cue to end was Dizzie Rascal’s Bassline Junkie played through a bass amp hidden inside a wall (one person’s piece), and everyone wound down their work, or ended their performances. We finished by playing Bonkers, also by Dizzee Rascal, as one of my classmates finished his performance prancing around the room, and then he played S&M by Rihanna as he continued to the end in a corner of the room with us all gathered around. The lights were switched on, signalling the end of the event.

If I were to do it again, I would have left more intervals or periods of silence in which to listen to some pieces individually, or to experience the bleeding of external sounds into our space; the saws in the workshops, people working in studios, the piano in the street outside being played. I also think it’s really important to continue this energy, and create more timed events as a group, rather than trying to spend money on expensive gallery spaces for one day exhibitions.

Ready to spend rest of this term slaying away.

GABRIELLE.

]]>https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/ba-fine-art-y1t3-wk-1-2-sonic-environment/feed/0IMG_1108gabriellerogers97IMG_1108IMG_1243IMG_1192BA Fine Art, Year 1, Term 2, Weeks 7-10: Metaphonica III and The Empress: Prologuehttps://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/ba-fine-art-year-1-term-2-weeks-7-10-metaphonica-iii-and-the-empress-prologue/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/ba-fine-art-year-1-term-2-weeks-7-10-metaphonica-iii-and-the-empress-prologue/#respondMon, 13 Mar 2017 13:52:21 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=514Continue reading BA Fine Art, Year 1, Term 2, Weeks 7-10: Metaphonica III and The Empress: Prologue]]>Ok so the past 3 weeks have literally been INSANE, had my Unit 2 resubmission (missed it first time round because I was in Australia… oopise), Unit 3 submission today, a group crit, essay, and I performed at ‘Metaphonica III’, and experimental sound event at Central St Martins.
Ultimate Dyspraxia Report. 2017. Performance, 5 minutes.

My initial proposal was to learn a song on bass on stage with a written piece projected behind me; it was intended to explore the relationship between my struggle with playing instruments due to my dyspraxia and sexism I have experienced within the DIY music scene. This felt too explanatory, so I was just going to have my dyspraxia report from an assessor displayed behind me, but there was a technical problem so none of my work was projected. Furthermore, I had issues with my bass which meant the sound was very quiet. In future, perhaps I will do smaller scale performances where I have more control over technical aspects, so I can learn to deal with things myself.

The Empress: Prologue. 2017. Film, 4 minutes.

This film is a work in progress, and shows Jess taking the role of The Empress – my higher self, as she uses objects from my life, in this reality, in a ritual to descend to this dimension. I used the green screen for the first time, and the Black Magic camera – however I had the exposure too low so I need to edit the luminosity and saturation further, to eliminate the desaturation. Furthermore, the current sound it just what was recorded in the studio, which was very noisy, so I plan to use Audition to edit the sound track. The ritual is based off of Wicca spellcasting, which I have been researching, and the background is a photo of a mountain forest in the rain, the one that inspired Petrichor. I used a similar technique to my first Empress film in warping the objects – using masks and Wave Warp or Turbulent Distortion; the idea was for the objects to be ceremonial, indexical of my life at the current moment in time. It is called Prologue as I intend to develop this project further, by showing how The Empress or my consciousness has risen/will rise through the 7 levels of consciousness, in a film of 7 chapters.

So anyway, that’s this term done!! Now for 6 weeks of reading, painting, photo taking and chilling.

]]>https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/ba-fine-art-year-1-term-2-weeks-7-10-metaphonica-iii-and-the-empress-prologue/feed/02017_03_01_Prologue.still5gabriellerogers97DSC05680 copy2017_03_01_Prologue.still5BA Fine Art, Year 1, Term 2, Weeks 4-7: Dreams, Plants, and Performance.https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/ba-fine-art-year-1-term-2-weeks-4-7-dreams-plants-and-performance/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/ba-fine-art-year-1-term-2-weeks-4-7-dreams-plants-and-performance/#respondMon, 13 Mar 2017 13:38:04 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=491Continue reading BA Fine Art, Year 1, Term 2, Weeks 4-7: Dreams, Plants, and Performance.]]>These weeks were mainly research based – investigating gender, Wicca religion, dreams, herbology and Beat writers. I initially planned to do a performative sculpture/installation by growing plants in the studio, however I kind of lost interest when I realised that growing plants takes more effort and attention to detail than I care to muster.

I had been thinking about growing plants as the ultimate act of creation – however I had also been writing down my dreams, and reading up on Tibetan Dream yoga, and now I think that dreams are the ultimate act of creation. Many people believe dreams to be 4th dimensional, and representative of our parallel lives, and when I write them down as soon as I wake up, they become stories similar to William Burroughs Naked Lunch: mad, incomprehensible, and able to read in whatever order as they will always be nonsensical. For a group crit and open studio event I did a performance of myself scattering bark and casting a circle in soil, creating a safe space like a Wicca spellcasting ritual, before lying down in it to read select dreams from my dream diary.

This feels like the beginning of something I want to develop further; this was my first live performance, not in front of the camera, and I really liked the energy and how natural it felt, using my body as a piece of art. Will definitely be using this more for next term, perhaps filming a one-take live performance in front of an audience for use as a level of consciousness in my film of 7 chapters.

]]>https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/ba-fine-art-year-1-term-2-weeks-4-7-dreams-plants-and-performance/feed/0IMG_9686gabriellerogers97Exhibition Review: Robert Rauschenberg, Tate Modern, and Wolfgang Tillmans, Tate Modern.https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/exhibition-review-robert-rauschenberg-tate-modern-and-wolfgang-tillmans-tate-modern/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/exhibition-review-robert-rauschenberg-tate-modern-and-wolfgang-tillmans-tate-modern/#respondMon, 20 Feb 2017 09:32:15 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=368Continue reading Exhibition Review: Robert Rauschenberg, Tate Modern, and Wolfgang Tillmans, Tate Modern.]]>You know what?? I must be a pretty crap art student for not hearing of Rauschenberg before my tutor told me (in November might I add) that I NEEDED to see the exhibition of his work at Tate Modern, organised in conjunction with The Museum of Modern Art, New York. I had somehow managed to research the majority of his contemporaries, never even coming across his incredibly diverse practice until seeing hundreds of posters for the exhibition, featuring the iconic image of JFK, on the Tube.
Robert Rauschenberg Retroactive II, 1964, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

I mean, I’ll be honest, I didn’t really fancy shelling out the 15 quid for a student (a bloody student!!!!!) ticket to the exhibition, so I put it off for a solid 2.5 months. Finally, I bit the bullet. Luckily, the Wolfgang Tillmans show had just opened the previous day, and if you buy a ticket to 2 exhibitions it’s £25 AND you get a free drink, which is a much more appealing offer.

So with the curation at the Tate exhibitions I’ve noticed they usually do it in chronological order of the artists career, which I mean isn’t bad like you’ve gotta start somewhere but like I’m not a fan of the layout of the gallery, they tend to cram a lot of the middle career work (often the most prolific) into those tiny little rooms at the back, which is a bit crap to be honest isn’t it. With Rauschenberg it was chronological to some extent, but then each room focused on a specific medium.

As soon as I walked into the room titled ‘Combines’ (number 3), I was instantly struck by by how evident his influence had been on the art world; abstract expressionism in particular. For Rauschenberg, a painting was not just a 2D representation – it was a performance, and the result was a sculptural art-object. Looking at his work, such as Black Market (1961, Museum Ludwig, Cologne), or Winter Pool (1959, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), the painting literally projects into the physical space beyond it, physically breaking the boundaries of the canvas, the object suggesting an action – removing or taking items from the box connected to Black Market, or descending the ladder in Winter Pool.

Something that I realised as I walked through the display of Dante Drawings (1958, Museum of Modern Art, New York), and into the room containing his silk screen paintings, was that the collage style and Dada influence in his compositions resulted in a kind of madness that reminded me so much of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, (1955-6); he truly embodied the hysteria of this era, the turn of the century, the vast post-war advancement of capitalism that was to swell and burst in the 1980s. Lines from Howl, such as ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked’ and ‘…battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of zoo’, involuntarily came to mind (maybe I’m just a wanker who likes Beat poetry too much), and even though Rauschenberg produced his final silkscreen paintings in 1964, nearly 10 years after Howl was written, they seemed like a natural progression in the cultural storytelling of the mid-20th century.

The small rooms at the back of the Eyal Ofer Galleries were not the right setting for Oracle (1962-5, Museé National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou), and Mud Muse (1968-71, Moderna Museet, Stockholm); they are large, dynamic installations that needed much more space. Furthermore, I really disliked how they had a theme of “Technology” for one room, cramming in work Rauschenberg produced for Apollo 11, Moon Museum (1969, MoMA, New York, collaboration between Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, David Novros, Forrest Myers, Robert Rauschenberg, John Chamberlain) in the same room as Mud Muse, where the minuscule microchip was very much lost, and felt like it had just been shoved there so that it had a place in the exhibition.

Moon Museum, 1969, ceramic, MoMA, New York.

The final rooms were much better curated, however the work was not as impactful or iconic. Untitled (Spread) (1983, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York), was one piece that really stood out for me here, perhaps because it was similar to the combines and screenprints he produced in his youth; except here using a solvent transfer process instead of screens.

Despite some criticisms (largely due to the architecture and layout of the galleries), this is an incredible exhibition with such a diverse spread of work from a truly exemplary artist of the 20th century – a must see.

2017, was configured by Tillmans himself; the press release clearly states that it is not a retrospective, each room is a response to the current social, cultural and political climate, using prints from the artists own studio collection. The first thing that struck me as I entered was the display – the prints were all different sizes, different papers, and displayed differently – hung with dog clips, framed, hung high, low, massive print, small print. It did give off a hint of art foundation end of year show vibes; but you know what? it WORKED. There was such a freshness in this, the photos spoke not just as 2 dimensional digital prints, but as art objects, to one another. There was a coherence to each room, and although the photos may have been unrelated, that’s what made each room interesting – there was no “oh here’s a series of so and so”, where you breeze past 8 similar photos all the same size all framed and hung adjacent to each other. You had to look at each photo.

Young Man, Jeddah, 2012.

truth study center (2005), a collection of clippings, objects, drawings, and photographs comes together with enormous prints from his Silver project, an excellent use of the larger room, giving space for the massive collection to breathe underneath the glass topped tables, as I often find this was of displaying archival material boring, and easy to overlook.

Surprisingly, one of my favourite pieces from the show was Playback Room, a space designed to listen to recorded music. There is a correlation between recorded music and photography – both are usually experienced in a way that is detrimental to the work: listening to music with cheap headphones or looking at photos on a small screen. As able to see Tillmans prints as he truly wanted them to be seen, we listen to Colourbox as they wanted their music to be heard, and it’s fucking brilliant.

Frank, 2016, Maureen Paley, London.

The final room was visually incredible, featuring a trio of sky prints and The State We’re In, 2015; depictions of nature in its most expansive and raw form, referencing a break from national borders and divisions. Tillmans work, and being able to see it here, in this way, has given me the kick up the arse I wanted; I left the exhibition determined, to take beautiful photographs of beautiful people, places, and things.

]]>https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/exhibition-review-robert-rauschenberg-tate-modern-and-wolfgang-tillmans-tate-modern/feed/0inflight-astro-ii-press-imagegabriellerogers97retroactive-ii-1964gold-standard-1964moon-museum-1969untitled_spread-1983young-man-jeddah-2012frank-2016-maureen-paleyBA Fine Art Year 1, Term 2, Weeks 2-4: Installation Workshop and ‘Petrichor’https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/ba-fine-art-weeks-2-4-installation-workshop-and-petrichor/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/ba-fine-art-weeks-2-4-installation-workshop-and-petrichor/#respondFri, 03 Feb 2017 16:09:28 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=323Continue reading BA Fine Art Year 1, Term 2, Weeks 2-4: Installation Workshop and ‘Petrichor’]]>My installation elective workshop started with a seminar on ‘How Artists Use Space’; this was a really engaging and succinct way to begin the next few weeks, and I felt really inspired as one of the artists mentioned, Michael Beutler, I had worked with on installing their exhibition ‘Pump House’, at Spike Island, and I ended up taking over the seminar for about 10 minutes, describing how we worked and the processes he used in the space.

We would have the next week (around 4 full days) to fully install a piece of work in one of the project spaces, as it would be in a gallery, for a group crit on the following Monday. I had already been planning an installation, to play a sound piece I’d produced the previous week in an environment created using dead Christmas trees, to be called ‘Petrichor’, intended to tell a story of my month travelling around Australia, and what I saw there. Honestly, this project was incredibly stressful, as I wasn’t used to having such a short amount of time, but I found it so helpful as it really gave me the kick up the arse I needed to learn about installing my work.

I decided on using the dark project space; a small room in the basement that was painted black, so I could turn the lights off and focus on it being a sensory experience of touch, smell, and sound. Originally, I planned to build a room inside the room, fill it with the trees stood up and cut into bits stuck to the walls and ceiling, and to have 4 speakers up on a shelf in each corner to play the sound, but my plans changed quite a bit. As I was working with another person in the room, I had to factor in their piece. I couldn’t build a wall in the short amount of time we were given, and then tried to use the corridor at the entrance of the room, but this would have been a health and safety hazard as the trees would have blocked the fire exit. I then decided to use a blackout curtain, but as I began to play around with the placement of the trees I realised I needed much more space than originally intended, as I wished to space them out to place a blanket down in between them for people to sit down on. This was due to a conversation with my tutor after playing her my sound piece, which was 10 minutes long, and she pointed out that it would be difficult to get people to stand for that long. I intended to get the group of 10 in my tutorial to spend 5 minutes each sat in the piece, as around 5 could fit. I also struggled with how to set up the trees, as I had wanted a very tight, claustrophobic environment, but there were not enough to do that with the amount of people I wanted to be involved and the amount of trees and space I had. They were then going to lead people through the space, but again it would be difficult to have them listen to the piece whilst doing this. Finally I set the 6 trees in a circle, held up by buckets filled with sand (I had tried to make stands using wood but this was too much considering the timescale). I also spread 75l of bark on the floor to add to the sensory experience.

The playing of the sound also proved to be a problem. I discovered that in order to play the sound from my macbook through 2 different sets of stereo speakers I would also have to use a mixing board. From a sheet of MDF (I’m actually mad proud of this) I made 6 shelves, one for each speaker and one each for my macbook and the mixing board, and painted them black to match the walls. I also painted over shiny patches on the walls with matt black paint, as when the lights were off and only the light from the door shone through these were reflective and were distracting. When it came to installing the speakers, however, I discovered that I had been given the wrong cables, and had probably been too ambitious with what I could do. I got the correct cables, cut it down to 1 set of speakers, no mixer, and installed the wires correctly. I could have done with longer cables, but I couldn’t do anything about it in the end, the only issue was that they weren’t all in straight lines, some were diagonal, and I had to tape them to the floor instead of fixing them to the ceiling.

When I showed the piece, the room was dark except for the light coming through the door and these LED battery powered circle lights that I installed at the base. This cast shadows on the walls, and you could see everyone else and the trees to some extent in the semi-darkness. On the wall opposite to where mine was situated, the other person had painted in glow in the dark paint on the wall, giving the effect that people said “if the gateway to Narnia led into a rave”. The sound piece was audible loudly, and filled the room. You could also smell the bark and the dead trees, which contrasted with the image of life I describe in the audio. Experiencing the Petrichor like this was actually amazing, as my orginal intention was to transport people in the traditional storytelling way, and in a way relive the moments described, however with the lighting, scent of decaying matter and fake SFX of rain and bug noises the whole effect was incredibly eerie, like those Victorian photographs of corpses dressed up to look as though they are still alive. But I was SOOOO happy with this, as in the audio I read out an excerpt from my notebook where I write about J Krishnamurti’s opinion on memory, on the past, and on truth, “a truth cannot be repeated”, so really the piece became more than I originally intended, and became an experience in it’s own, rather than a re-imagination of the past.

]]>https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/ba-fine-art-weeks-2-4-installation-workshop-and-petrichor/feed/0img_9335gabriellerogers97BA Fine Art Year 1, Term 2: Week 1https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/ba-fine-art-year-1-term-2-week-1/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/ba-fine-art-year-1-term-2-week-1/#respondMon, 16 Jan 2017 12:35:01 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=303Continue reading BA Fine Art Year 1, Term 2: Week 1]]>First week back at uni has left me EXHAUSTED. In addition to crazy jetlag (try 50 hours travelling back to London from Australia then not sleeping for 4 nights), I hadn’t cycled in a month so when I made my 2 hour commute (1 hour each way) my ASS was in AGONY. Only just recovered. Plus trying to adjust back to winter (the sun doesn’t rise til 8am?????) and this freezing weather has thrown me a bit. But I’m not trying to complain here – super grateful that I was able to take a month to go travel an amazing country with my best friend, which has meant I’m feeling really refreshed and ready to grab this new term by the balls

Anyway enough about my ass and life’s balls. We started off by presenting in our tutor groups what we had done over Christmas. The majority of us had done fuck all, I’d done a little painting telling a story about how I missed the sun. Only in hindsight did I realise that with the dot work and story telling aspect, it was similar to some of the aboriginal Australian paintings I had seen in galleries in Sydney. I also read out (pretty shyly) some of my writings, which make up a large part of my work – yet I never present them. This was actually the first time I had, but I might as well have not done because I just mumbled them in monotone. There is still a lot of fear in my, and this term is all about breaking down that fear, being brave and not being scared to push myself. My tutor pointed out that the painting seemed like I’d just done it to have something to show (which I had) and I could have thought more about how to present my work, how to turn this storytelling aspect I want to pursue into something to be experienced.

It was because of this, reading out my writings of my experiences travelling Australia’s east coast, talking about nature, the smell of wet plants, the noise of the bugs, that I thought about doing a sound installation. I had an idea ages ago where a person walks into an empty room that smells of wet plants – my favourite smell, called petrichor. I didn’t know how this would be possible, but I could do sound and sensation with speakers and installing plants. Having seen a load of dead Christmas trees on the streets surrounding my studio, and thinking about the relation between the eucalyptus rain forests I had been hiking through, and the traditional western family Christmas that I had missed for the first time, I decided to harvest these trees, dragging about 5 into the project space to deal with later (before they were carted off by London council). I am either going to use them as they are, whole, or cut them and hang the branches, or possibly spray paint them green again, or silver or gold. I will need to go back to the space with them in and decide from there.

On Friday I booked the sound studio for the morning so I could record myself reading some of my edited writings. I had wanted to practice monologuing/performing, but I had never done it before, and didn’t want to in my room because my flatmates would hear. I went over the material several times, and practiced reading out by reciting Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, a Beat writer who has inspired my work. At some parts I free-styled the performance, really getting into speaking new words as if I was writing them, and projecting and gesturing. I then used what I had recorded in Adobe Audition, along with Adobe, BBC, and Apple SFX packages to tell a story of my travels, each section telling a little bit about a place I had gone. I mainly used jungle ambience, rain and ocean sounds, but also used MGMT’s Kids, which had been playing when me and some other people wen skinny dipping, and now always reminds me of that time, and a recording of Tibetan monks chanting ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’, which relates to the end of the piece. At that point, I began talking about The Empress, a fictional device I invented, as my 7th dimensional self that comes down to the 4th dimension to experience the flatness of this world, and the buzzing of the bugs relates to the idea of vibrational frequencies, that she has changed her frequency to this one, and I can communicate with her through meditating, like the monks chanting.

I am pleased with the sound piece, but I need to show it to other people, and I need to carefully consider my installation, and how it will be presented and how people will experience it. This term I will be doing a workshop elective on installation, which I am really excited to start.

Love n light n all that x.

]]>https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/ba-fine-art-year-1-term-2-week-1/feed/0img_9267gabriellerogers97BA Fine Art Year 1, Term 1, Weeks 8-10https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/12/03/ba-fine-art-term-1-weeks-8-10/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/12/03/ba-fine-art-term-1-weeks-8-10/#respondSat, 03 Dec 2016 15:46:06 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=278Continue reading BA Fine Art Year 1, Term 1, Weeks 8-10]]>Almost at the end of my first term at uni. These past couple of weeks I’ve mainly been developing my studio work (in our Studio as Machine event), planning a group film project and working on our brief to ‘make a photograph of nothing’. Hmm. Art school am I right.

For Unit 2, there are two main threads I can identify within my practice. The first is me learning how to use the studio, and let myself be used by it in creating my work; this began in the project Studio as Machine, and I am still trying to develop this now. The second is an idea I have been working on since the beginning of November – “The Empress”, the idea of working as my 6th dimensional self, who controls all of the versions of me in the 6th dimension. This stems from my deep interest and research in M-Theory, spirituality, philosophy, and sacred geometry. Based off of the Empress tarot card, she represents the embodiment of female energy and creativity. Part of this stemmed from my personal tutorial, where I realized I focus too much on research (particularly scientific theories) in my practice, and not the making, the experimentation. I considered this in relation to sacred geometry, which is related to the idea of left and right brain thinking, with left being the “male” or “straight line” energy, and right “female” or “curve” energy; I believed that in my work I become too “male”, and needed to become more “female” – that is, less structured in my development and to learn by making. In the past few weeks I have produced a film about The Empress (beginning to learn how to use the recording and editing equipment available to me), worked onto the walls of the Studio as a kind of installation, make a proto-crown for her and thought about the idea of storytelling, using narration in my work (inspired by Walter Benjamin’s essay The Storyteller and Tacita Dean’s 2015 film Event for a Stage). The idea of the Empress as my higher self, and I am a story that she is telling, or perhaps one of her dreams; I have begun practicing Tibetan Dream Yoga, and recording my dreams by writing them down – my dreams as stories that I could perform or narrate. I have, this week, begun to think about how to unify these two threads. The studio could be considered as a dream realm, or a place where I write stories, my art being my stories or dreams, my lower self. Or perhaps myself as the consciousness of the Empress, and when I am in the studio, the studio becomes her body, as the body is the vessel for the great dream of life, and the studio is the vessel for dreams to manifest. These are ideas I will continue to explore in Unit 3. Artists and exhibitions that particularly influenced my work this term were based in film and installation; The Infinite Mix, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Embedded Souths (an online film screening), and Tacita Dean.

The Empress. Film, 3:00 minutes.

For our brief to make a photograph of nothing (which I think is an impossible task), I thought of nothing as the spaces in between things, considering the spaces in between dimensions, or in between Planck frames – the smallest unit of measurement, our experience of the 4th dimension being an infinite series of 3 dimensional Planck frames, as my research was very heavily related to M-theory. This space is beyond representation, as the Planck is 10^-20 times smaller than a photon, rendering it invisible as we need light to be able to see. This relates to the idea of a photograph – a light picture – as I consider seeing to be photography: we do not see objects, we see light. The pomegranate is a part of The Empress project – it is a symbol of fertility and is present on the tarot card; this is an attempt to integrate my own interests in the brief. It also reconciles the male and female energies of this picture – the split representing the space in between a Planck frame. The installation of this piece is a result of trying to print the photos, and not realising that they were automatically cropped. My initial reaction was anger, however instead of releasing it, or trying to fight it by fixing it, I went along with it, adding the middle photo as an index of a past relationship, an embodiment of a feeling I no longer have, that is perhaps nothing as it is no longer “real”.

I found the Studio as Machine event much more productive than the initial project – perhaps this is because I had opened up in my process of making. I continued on the work I started in the studio the previous week, working as “The Empress”, using wool from Poundland to finger knit. This was a fertile process/performance, as knitting is considered a feminine craft, and by using my hands I was growing the knit from my body, like an umbilical cord. The technique was very simple and I picked it up quickly after an initial failure, however I do not think I challenged myself here. Be More: stems from my desire to engage the right side of my brain ore, as I tend to be quite mechanical when I am creating. I expanded into the space of the studio, to see what would happen, as talking to my tutor made me realise I do tend to hide and compartmentalise my work – I don’t know if this is a reaction to my work, but someone wrote “Toilet” in the same tape. Projecting my film, The Empress, also turned into a kind of collaboration, as some people were doing a computer generated vocal performance whilst I projected it. There was a strange interaction between their audio and my glitched narration, like a conversation coming from the computers – one that was a recording of organic sound, the other a live artificial audio projection.

So there’s the end of term for me. I’m a bit annoyed that I’m missing my assessment as I’m flying to Australia on the day of it, but hey ho it’s my own darn fault, and I’m not complaining about having 4 weeks of summer. Limiting myself to 1 sketchbook and my camera as I am the world’s biggest overpacker, generally just looking forward to doing yoga, going on hikes, eating fruit and enjoying life. In January hopefully I’ll be super charged and ready to plough ahead with our film and Unit 3.

]]>https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/12/03/ba-fine-art-term-1-weeks-8-10/feed/0nothing-photo-1agabriellerogers97BA Fine Art Year 1, Term 1, Weeks 1-7https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/ba-fine-art-year-1-weeks-1-7/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/ba-fine-art-year-1-weeks-1-7/#respondSun, 20 Nov 2016 00:42:30 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=259Continue reading BA Fine Art Year 1, Term 1, Weeks 1-7]]>In love with my uni and everything about it right now, just discovered that there is a maths department (!!!!), which is really exciting as my work is based so much about string theory right now. I was struggling a bit at the start of the term as we had a project called “Studio as Machine”, where the studio was intended as a catalyst for our work. During this 2 week project all I found I could produce was writings, fiction and non fiction, and a short film of myself reading these out, along with some online collaborative work. This was perhaps because I fetishise beginnings, and see them as this perfect blank space brimming with prospect that I am anxious about fucking up. I enjoyed the collaborative work, but I think because we were all so lost and all we did was talk about the studio and the process that we just lost ourselves even more. I kind of shut myself off at this point, making a film of myself reading out my writings on my phone alone in the project spaces, but I did not present any of my work in the group crit. I think this is because I have never put myself in front of the camera, and also there is that residual anxiety about not being good enough. The work I did on the collaborative online space, which was meant to be a parallel virtual sphere, was small compared to what other people did, just typing out some of my writings and posting an edited screen cap of a toaster on the Argos website. (The link to our online space is here: http://studioasmachine.wixsite.com/space). Whilst I liked the idea of the space, and might actually switch to using this platform rather than wordpress as it is much more visual, it struggled with having 10+ admins and as people were free to delete stuff as desired some people’s contributions were completely lost. I also didn’t like how this project required us to be in the studio every day, as I wanted to use new equipment and materials but felt constrained by the space. In fact, this project pushed me back into my old habit of compulsively searching concepts until a tutor reminds me I have to actually have to so some fucking work. As a response to this, I decided to just try out all the new equipment we had available. After having researched a shit ton about string theory and multi dimensions I was looking for a way to incorporate this into a film.

I had a brief for a 1 minute film, which I was kind of ok with, I had been thinking about John Cage and sound and how it physically fills a space and is movement. I filmed myself cutting lengths of string from a ball, and then made my own sound track using synths in GarageBand to match my movements. I also had the image darkest at the beginning and increase to 100% at the end, and had noise on 100% to kind of represent vibrations and light and interference, as I had been thinking about light a lot since Diwali and all these fireworks outside my window. Also I completely fucked up by having the frame rate when I recorded it on my DSLR at 24fps and exporting it to 25, but actually I really liked the disjointed effect of this, disturbance and all that. I don’t think I did very well in the group crit though as I fell asleep and was also probably on Tinder at some point. Oh well. I tried. After this debacle I had the idea to present myself on camera as the character of the tarot card “The Empress”, a kind of witch, and edit footage I shot of myself in my local area at night to look as though I am warping spacetime, as The Empress was intended to be my 6th dimensional self from the 7th dimension, descended to our dimension to have a look around. I did some test shots on my DSLR of me cycling on my bike and holding out the Empress tarot card, which came up in a tarot reading for me as my ultimate hopes and fears, The Empress representing the pinnacle of creativity and feminine energy. There are these sports courts across the road from me which provide really interesting lighting at night, so I played around there.

Borrowing a microphone from uni, I tried to record myself reading out the meaning of the tarot card in my room, but whilst it allowed me to get to grips with Audition the acoustics in my room were shit so I didn’t use anything I recorded, but booked out a sound studio to record in there the following week. I also borrowed a Canon XF100 and did some test shots of around where I live, editing them together, layering and adding waves, masks etc.Using the sound studio was great, as was being able to use the editing suites. Overall I am happy with the short film, and I learned so much by just doing.

This week I was in the metal workshop and made a quick prototype crown for The Empress, as in the card she wears a crown of stars. My crown was made of spot welded wire and had crosses, as these were easier to do than the original pentagrams I intended, and based it on the Capricorn constellation, as I am a Capricorn and liked the analogy of the goat and the occult. I taped a pentagram, hexagram, and hectogram to the wall of the studio, representing the transition the empress made from the 7th dimension to the 5th, and placed a pomegranate on the floor in front, a symbol of fertility also present on the tarot card. I then played around with the space further, taping up my notes from Studio as Machine, as I wanted to actually utilise the space and respond to it. I enjoyed doing this, perhaps because I feel more comfortable in the studio now, as though I belong maybe. Also I feel less like people are watching me. I don’t know why but I have a strange relationship with people watching me. I’m pretty narcissistic but I have this fucking anxious streak left in me that is pretty hard to budge. Anyway. That’s the past 7 weeks in a nutshell, now to send off my report on London’s art scene and take a photo of nothing lol.

]]>https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/ba-fine-art-year-1-weeks-1-7/feed/0screen-shot-2016-11-19-at-21-54-59gabriellerogers97toaster-dickSummer Project: Our Names Fit Us Better Than We Fit Each Otherhttps://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/summer-project-our-names-fit-us-better-than-we-fit-each-other/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/summer-project-our-names-fit-us-better-than-we-fit-each-other/#respondFri, 12 Aug 2016 14:41:34 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=233Continue reading Summer Project: Our Names Fit Us Better Than We Fit Each Other]]>This summer my work has been geared towards a group exhibition, “Intimate”, at the Centrespace gallery in Bristol, that I am taking part in. The show will run from the 18th-25th August and will show the work of 6 young artists, exploring intimacy and personal subjects.

I have been working on the theme of relationship anarchy and possessiveness, stemming from the decision of myself and my current boyfriend to reject the standard of monogamous, romantic relationships. He is leaving the country for a year soon and we have both realised that we don’t want to be someone’s “girlfriend” or “boyfriend”, we want to completely reject the notion of a stereotypical romantic partner and instead interact with people individually in a way that feels right for us. I have produced an A2 photographic print of a field of wildflowers, a large A frame signboard with neon words “OUR NAMES FIT US BETTER THAN WE FIT EACH OTHER” on one side, and “I HAVE EVERYTHING I NEED” on the other side. These will be displayed as an installation, with the sign stood up in the centre of the gallery and the neon lights on, the print laying on the floor in front of one side and on the other side there will be a smashed vase stuck together with glitter glue (from my kinstugi project) and a single red rose. The words on the sign represent how my name means “messenger” and my boyfriend’s name means “wanderer”. My initial plan for the installation was to have more components; such as my name in Hebrew (the language it originates from) on a “My name is:” sticker, a painting, a copy of Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’ and dried/pressed flowers. Instead I decided to keep my concept clear and not to over work it with clutter.

I started off by researching the work of artists such as Petra Collins and the Ardorous Collective, which has influenced the work I have created for the exhibition aesthetically. Since making the piece, I have realised that this trend of young (mainly white, cis) female artists is in fact quite boring, the style is overdone and the concept is lacking, tending to explore female sexuality and body image. I have realised that this work (as well as the work I am currently working on) pleases me, but does nothing more. It doesn’t excite me. I have made myself comfortable. There is no escaping the fact, however, that my work is very similar to the artists of Arduous (such as Arvida Bystrom), although they are mainly photographers. I have used floral, feminine elements and glitter, with neon- things that regularly appear in their work. Even the film I have been planning to accompany the installation, a essay read by me over footage of feet walking though fields, blah blah blah. Again I have been producing work that I feel comfortable doing, and now I have realised that I know what I have to do next. I need to go in the opposite direction. I need to work out what makes me scared and go there. I have changed my idea for the film to make it more interesting (shorter, the essay reduced to a few lines of prose(?), and including footage of the meteor shower, which I saw last night and will go out tonight again to film), as before my concept for it was influenced by Petra Collins films, particularly the one she did for the Tate’s Georgia o’Keefe exhibition. It doesn’t help that the work of my friends in the “Intimate” is very similar to the work of the Ardorous, and I think that in order for our art to make a cohesive exhibition I wanted to follow their aesthetic. Hopefully by starting at Central St Martins in September I will be inspired by the new people around me and can break out of this rut I am feeling.

I think I was drawn their work because I wanted to be them – they get articles in Dazed and i-D and I want that, but I have this problem of getting stuck trying to do work I think I should do rather than what I need to do to push myself artistically, and now I think that to push myself artistically I have to work on my painting. Abstract painting terrifies me. I love looking at these pieces, but I can never do them myself. I can’t. Or maybe I’ve just never tried. Or maybe I just think I should do them, and I’m back to where I started. The key difference here, however, is that it makes me uncomfortable, and it excites me a little bit, which is why I think I should do it next. Furthermore, I have never done this before. I have been looking at female artists, such as Fiona Rae, Meghan Rooney, Eva Papamargariti, and Charlotte Duale. Once I have finished my film I will be doing paintings. Maybe by the time I start my course I will realise that this is not how I can push myself, and I will find something else to do. But until then I need something to work on.

]]>https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/summer-project-our-names-fit-us-better-than-we-fit-each-other/feed/0Fieldgabriellerogers97Duality: Week 10-12 ENDhttps://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/duality-week-10-12-end/
https://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/duality-week-10-12-end/#respondThu, 26 May 2016 15:05:06 +0000http://gabriellerogersart.wordpress.com/?p=210Continue reading Duality: Week 10-12 END]]>In these past few weeks I have finished my ceramics series and edited my films, both “Wake Up” and the documentation of the process of Kinstugi.

Editing “Wake Up” was trickiest, as I hadn’t used Premiere Pro or GarageBand before and had only edited one film, using iMovie, and the last time I used music editing software was years ago. There were a couple of clips that I didn’t use, as they had been filmed using a shoulder mount and there was too much rocking to have the dreamy effect that I wanted. When I began editing it I had some background sounds of birds which was 2 looped audio clips from what I had filmed on my DSLR. I intended to rerecord it on a sound recorder and microphone from college and have that as the soundtrack for the first sequence, and then to have the music begin when she started to dance. I decided not to do this though, as the music looped anyway and I wanted the music to represent the flow of consciousness from one body to the next, which is why the footage is the same (just shorter clips) for each loop or reincarnation but the music changes slightly each time. I started off by making a loose demo for the film but this didn’t work as it would have been a lot of effort to change the speed of the clips to match the tempo of the music, and it didn’t fit at all, so I had to finish editing the film, get the clips into multiples of 2 seconds (as it was 120bpm at 4:4 so each bar was 2 seconds long) and export the unfinished film, then import it to GarageBand so I could fit the song to the music. I only kept the original sound clip from the very last shot, where she wakes up and gasps.

Here you can see how I edited the colours, as I wanted it to be ethereal because it is meant to represent how life is the great dream from which we must wake up. The last shot, the colours are more lifelike but I did enhance the vibrancy still. When I first started editing I had no clue what I was doing, and tried to have a cross fade on every shot in the first sequence. This was obviously too much, and made the film way too busy, so I redid it with no transitions.

There is a link to the finished film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4pDmwkRhWA

I’m really happy with it.

I also love how my Kintsugi series came out. It’s a lot different to how I initially visualised it, as I wanted bright glazes and glitter glue, but what I produced it very beautiful and I am happier with it.

Before and after the smashing.

I was a bit reluctant to smash them at first, because they had taken so long to make and I loved them, but I realised this is why I had to do it, because I was exploring resurrection, and this linked with Christians’ belief that God made them, loved them, and they had to die, but they get to live again on judgement day. Smashing them was actually really hard because the clay was quite thick. They took some bashing but I got there in the end. I used plastic adhesive to glue them back together which worked fine, and applied it with a palette knife. After it dried I glued on the gold leaf with more adhesive, which was really tricky as it was so delicate. Editing the film was easy, as I just cut down the clips to get about 5 minutes of footage, as it was only meant to be a documentation. After watching Mary Flower’s film for “Art from Elsewhere” I realised it was really important to not let the shots be too long, as it will be super boring and no one will want to watch it, like I felt about her film. It had too many long, self indulgent shots.

For my final exhibition, I originally planned to hang up my sculpture and to project my film through it, but because I had to put the film on the showreel for the film room I will just hang it in a corner and place my Kintsugi series beneath it on the floor. I have now finished my project and our exhibition will open on the 24th of June at Bristol School of Art, Queens Road.